


When We're Least Expecting It

by danke_rose



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Major character is already dead, Set after Kurt's death in the comics, This is so sad why did I write it?, kurtty - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 05:30:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20304241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danke_rose/pseuds/danke_rose
Summary: Kitty has a hard time mourning the loss of her friend Kurt Wagner after his canon-based death.  Then she finds something she didn't expect.





	When We're Least Expecting It

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Drabble Sentence prompt: I miss you](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/509743) by Bamfsback. 

> Oh my god why did I write this? Why? I don't know! It's so sad. Please don't read this if you don't like sad stories because he does not come back at the end and it's sad. I don't normally write sad stuff because life is sad enough as it is, but this just showed up in my head. Did I say sad already? How many times? Sad, sad, sad. 
> 
> Also, the idea of the journals came from a little piece that Bamfsback wrote--a lot of Bamfsback's writing became what I suppose is now headcanon for me. But that's where that idea is from. The rosary is from someone else, too and for the life of me I can't remember who wrote about her keeping his rosary for him! If it was you, please let me know because I would like to credit the author. And of course, if I find the fic--because I reread a lot of them--I'll come back here and give credit.

Kitty has been in this place before, this space in which the grief is palpable, like a mist surrounding her. She's been here too many times to count, floundering in a darkness so deep as to be liquid, rather than the simple absence of light. Only this time it is worse than any other. This time, her companion is missing. Her friend who could see in the dark and lead her out of it, keeping her from stumbling.

Missing him is like a wound that never heals. It is a constant leaking of blood from a cut that won't scab. It is a pain behind her ribs that torments her in the night and keeps her awake. It is a nagging feeling of something always missing, that she knows she has lost and cannot get back.

She lies awake, stares at her ceiling, and does not cry.

His room is locked, preserved almost like a shrine. Sometimes she goes there and touches his uniforms, hanging in the closet. Sometimes she just sits on his bed and imagines what he might have dreamed about when he was alive. She doesn't cry. She's met Logan here a few times. He stands in the middle of the empty room and stares, and leaves. He cries a lot.

For all the aching hollowness inside her, she is numb. Numb to the grief, numb to all her emotions. She goes through the motions of her life, pretending she is capable and well, and knowing that she is far from it. She knows, on some level, that this is not right. That she needs help, she needs to move on, he would not want this for her. But this is where she is now. This is the reality of her life. Always missing his face, his touch, the sound of his laughter. The accent she grew to love, that at first was difficult to understand sometimes. The words he used to call her, _K__ä__tzchen, liebling, schatz_. She can still, if she concentrates, hear that voice. She can imagine how his hand felt in hers. She can find his scent in the linens of his room, sulfur and brimstone that she hated in life and would give anything, _anything_, to smell again.

She goes through the motions of her day and lies awake at night and does not cry.

She finds, one day, by accident, a stack of journals under his bed. She had gone into his room, seeking out that missing piece of her, that keeps her puzzle from being completed. She doesn't know how she wound up on the floor, but she was there, lying on her stomach when she turned her head. He is dead. She reaches for the journals, thinking they might be photo albums.

She opens the first one. His handwriting leaps out at her and for a moment she has to hold her breath and close her eyes. Then, slowly, she opens them again and looks at the words. It is a journal of sorts, but not what she expected. She sees the date, first, from when she was lost to the stars. The journal is pages of letters to her. To _her_. Most of them in German, a few in English. She can read the German, but at first she doesn't. She simply flips through the pages. So many pages. Something inside her cracks and splits and something painful spills out.

There are three journals. They are all alike. They are all filled with letters to her. Every page.

She feels the wetness on her cheeks and before it can destroy his words, she closes the book. She cradles it to her chest like a baby and cries.

When she stops crying, she puts the journals back under the bed. She doesn't want anyone else to find them, but she can't quite bear to take them from his room. It is the same reason she hasn't taken any of his things to her room, besides his rosary, which she keeps around her neck along with the Star of David he gave her years ago. Looking back, she thinks it might have been something besides a token act of friendship, but at the time, she didn't see it that way. She never saw him that way.

The next day she goes back and starts reading. She doesn't cry. Each letter begins the same way, '_Liebe_ _K__ä__tzchen_,' and ends the same way, '_Ruhe dich gut aus und weiß, dass ich dich vermisse_.” Rest well and know that I miss you. Some of the pages are warped and smeared, and it is not from her own tears, and these are the worst. To think that he would have sat, at his desk, on his bed, and cried over her nearly breaks her. The first one she finds like this, she shoves the book under the bed and runs out of the room, through the walls, to her own space, and from there to the grounds, in spite of the bitter cold. She shivers, and no one brings her a parka. She almost cries. But she doesn't.

She reads them all, eventually spending a whole day in his room reading them, and when she is finished she is changed. Everything about him is different, what she thought she knew, what she ignored, what she should have noticed. He loved her, his best friend, surely, and that she never had doubt of. But he loved her so much more, never telling her, never giving her any sign past his usual charming flirtations. Here in words he never thought she would see, it is clear and plain and it causes her chest to constrict as she realizes how much she loved him, too.

She thinks of Piotr, and her love for him, and it seems that of a child now. She doesn't need Piotr. She needs Kurt. And he is gone. Taken from her in an act of selflessness, not surprising, really. When she finishes the books she takes them. The only things she takes of his besides the rosary, and she puts them beneath her own bed.

She still doesn't sleep at night.

She still doesn't cry.

But now a piece of him is with her, so that when she thinks she can't make it through yet another day without him, she pulls out those words and touches the pages his hand moved over, and she remembers that he loved her.


End file.
